Hiatus
by NellyN
Summary: A week after House's breakdown, Cuddy and Wilson confront their anxieties. Intervals Trilogy 1/3. Anonymous comments enabled--readers, don't worry about signing up or signing in to review. Thanks!
1. There were bruises

_Come, believers. Prayer is better than sleep. - Azan (Morning Call)_

###

There were bruises on her shoulder for days.

She realized it the next morning, in the shower. Her hand brushed the place where he had grabbed her, and there was a dull pain, and she thought (dully) _oh, that's odd_. But she wasn't surprised. Not until she turned her head and lifted her arm and saw the row of blue half-moons.

He had gripped her so hard…

The marks were low enough on her arm that she couldn't wear sleeveless tops. It was no problem at work. If her wardrobe changed for a few days, nobody would say anything.

But she found herself covering up at home, too. Wearing loose, dark clothing.

Rachel helped. She already loved the baby, already looked at her and thought, _my little girl_, but she felt that love deepening, becoming not just Mom's love for Baby, but Lisa's love for her daughter. Rachel: occupied by the present, entertained by the simple and beautiful, possessing a well of deep need. In her presence, it was almost impossible to feel numb or incapable or alone. Now they were allies against the dark.

The problem was work. It got harder after she became a parent. Then it got easier. Now it was too easy. She'd find herself sitting at her desk at 10:30 in the morning, the phone toning in her ear, a legal pad in front of her, thinking: _I was just on a conference call_. And through some great effort she would remember that she'd been talking to the Joint Commission, or Shep Slattery from the Board, or…

And the notes would be quite in order, and everything would be fine, except she couldn't remember the conversation. She had a sense of saying all the right things, of running meetings, of eating—alone, with people. But that week her experience was limited to arriving at work, making coffee, and driving home at the end of the day with a vague sense of accomplishment. Like she had crossed something off a list.

She didn't feel bad. Just… disoriented.

Last year, she'd gone out with this guy, a soldier back from the Middle East; he never told her which country. While he was over there, he said, he got accustomed to hearing the call to prayer. It happened every day, five times a day, at every mosque in every town. He got so tired of hearing the damn minarets every day. But then he came home and he couldn't measure time anymore. He couldn't sleep, barely ate, never made a date on time, because he was like one of Pavlov's dogs with those minarets.

She figured he was crazy, and eventually she stopped seeing him, and some time after that he went back there and they never spoke again. But she remembered the story. She realized she usually saw House a couple of times a day, his office between ten and twelve, her office between three and five, like that. Then she'd stopped thinking about it, because she didn't like questions that had that kind of answer. But there was no avoiding it now. All of a sudden, there were no bookends to the workday, nothing to nail it down, and it slipped out of her grasp like an eel.

The bruises faded after three or four days, but they still ached sometimes, and she thought about that, too.


	2. The thing is

The thing is," she told Wilson, when they'd finally worked around to talking about it, "I'm not that upset." He started to interrupt, but she kept going. "It's like…" She struggled for the metaphor. "It's like when you lose your keys." She glanced up. She knew that would get him, and it did; his eyebrows shot up and he coughed.

She waited, but he was going to let her play it out.

She said, "Okay. You need your keys, right? You need them to go places. And to lock your…" She chewed her lip. "You need them."

"All right," said Wilson, glancing at his key ring.

They were in his office, which had long been established as the sort of unofficial confessional of the sixth floor. It was the smallest office assigned to a department head in the entire hospital. Wilson had never asked why it was his, had never asked to move. He was behind his desk, nearly walled in by a stack of blue oncology charts. She was perched on the edge of his couch, elbows on her knees, hands folded around her cup. She anticipated a comment about defensive body language, but Wilson didn't make comments like that.

"You lose them," she continued, "and there are things you can't do, but it's not like… they're mostly symbolic anyway. It's more annoying than anything else. You don't really feel _bad_ about it. You don't… if he _really_…" She had lost the thread, fumbled the concept. She covered her confusion by taking a slow sip. The coffee singed her tongue and throat.

Wilson gripped the bridge of his nose. "You're saying there's something wrong with the way you're handling this."

"I'm saying there's nothing to handle. I should feel worse." She stared at the cup for a minute, focusing on the lip. _Do you have two kinds of lipstick in the same shade_? House had asked her, and he'd had a kind of impatient, distant expression. An odd question. But he had an odd question every day. He practically _was_ an odd question. "I should feel guilty." She shook her head, blinked get the sting out of her eyes. "Instead I'm just—tired."

"Tired?"

Probing for information without giving any. She pursed her lips.

Wilson rearranged a couple of things on his desk."Two minutes ago, you were talking about your arm. Then it was the Middle East." He rotated his coffee cup into a more pleasing orientation. "And then it was keys. And now you're not talking at all."

This didn't seem to require a response, so she kept silent. She lifted one hand from her cup and massaged the back of her neck.

"Have you considered the possibility," he said patiently, "that what you're going through is not symbolic?"

She bristled. "Well, how do _you_ feel about it?"

Wilson took a deep breath and almost met her eyes. "I think it's good."

"_Good_?" There was a little lilt of anger in her voice; she tried to swallow it.

He nodded. "Good for him, good for you—"

"Good for you?" she fired back.

He shrugged, but his face tightened.

She said, "He's your best friend."

He chewed on a thumbnail, nodded. "And I'm sad for him. And worried."

"When I came in here," she said, "you thought…" She'd entered without knocking. When the door swung open, Wilson grinned, like he had just come up with the world's best joke and absolutely _had_ to tell someone. Then he'd registered her: Cuddy. His expression morphed into, _oh, it's you_, then settled into something reserved and patient. And a little lost.

"And that," he agreed. "But where he is… it's good. I mean, I know the people." He had already assured her of this, many times; he held up a hand against her protest. "But I also mean _where_ he is." Wilson's hand came to rest gently on the desk.

She understood that he was talking about their friend's location in a larger sense, a spiritual or emotional sense, and while this idea troubled and frustrated her, she wasn't sure she disagreed. That part of House that was irresponsible, that was dangerous, that _suffered_—she accepted it, minimized it, even, because the part of him that was good and bright outshined it. But she'd spent a lot of time worrying about the day the balance tipped, and the fact that it had was shocking but almost cathartic. He had to get better or he had to get worse. Didn't he?

Wasn't any change a sign of progress?

The ambiguity of the question disturbed her so deeply that she ducked it, grasped onto the smaller assurance of _at least he's physically safe_. She wondered if that was the only certainty she'd ever get.

Wilson caught her expression. He eyed her carefully, applying a mental slide rule to their relationship. Then he inched his chair back and propped his feet on the desk, ankles crossed. His way of underlining the point without making it seem like a big deal. And of hunkering down, preparing himself.

As his nominal boss, she could have said something, but she didn't.

"No other way this happens," said Wilson. "Cuddy. No other way. I mean, this was a bad year, but it's never been good. And it's been ten years." He was counting back to the leg, to Stacy.

Cuddy had known House longer; she felt a little fizz of amusement. When he was twenty-seven, she remembered (seeing him as he had been), House had stolen two canisters of nitrous oxide from the dental school, cracked the seals, and stuffed them in a vent in Taubman Library during finals week. The gas ran out, the building was evacuated, and the exams were rescheduled long before the canisters were discovered.

She'd been warned in advance.

She cracked her first authentic adult smile in a week. "Twenty," she corrected.

Wilson smiled reflexively, and shrugged. "Fifty." He tipped his head; this was a new idea. "I guess what I'm saying is… I don't know. He's my friend, but I don't know. What's broken, when did it happen, how do I fix it." He rotated his coffee cup again. He hadn't taken a sip. "You try to do right. But..." He shook his head, doubtful.

When he spoke again, he was focused on a point just above her head, and it was like he'd memorized the line. "He's in a good place."

"Sure," said Cuddy, briefly closing her eyes. "Fine."

When she opened them, Wilson's attention snapped back to her. "Look, why don't you come with me tonight?"

"He won't see me," she said, too quickly. A distant sense of obligation had compelled her to call Mayfield, twice, only to be informed both times that House was physically fine but refusing visitors. She did not believe either of these things were true.

Wilson said, "He won't see anyone for seven or eight more days. It's policy."

"Oh." She felt something loosen in her chest and adjusted her position on the couch.

"But," said Wilson, "we have to do something about his apartment. Soon."


	3. Sooner than she thought

Sooner than she thought. The whole day had passed, and it felt like seconds later.

Late afternoon. They were in Wilson's car, Princeton drifting by as they rolled the few blocks between the hospital and House's condo. "No," said Cuddy, switching Wilson's cell phone to her other ear. "I don't know when." The voice droned a weak protest. She tried to think of a good lie, and landed on an approximation of one. "I'm sorry. It's a family emergency. When I get back we can arrange some additional… thank you. Thanks so much. Can I talk to her?"

Cuddy's nanny held the phone to Rachel's ear. Cuddy could hear Rachel's baby breaths, her soft gurgles, and felt warm. But she didn't say anything. They were still at a point where their most intimate conversations took place in silence. As she listened to Rachel, she let her breath fog the window, traced idle patterns with her fingertips.

Wilson was right about the condo.

It was a sad thing. You could neglect a relationship for months, even years, and never see the damage. But when you left a house, decay set in immediately. After a couple of days, milk soured. Mail and dust accumulated. And bills. They'd cut off his electricity after a couple of late notices. The maid would stop coming, too. Cuddy wouldn't like that. The place should stay habitable. They would have to keep paying, keep stopping by.

But for how long? How long did that make sense?

She bit her lip, angry at herself for being so pessimistic. _As long as it takes. For God's sake, he's not _dea—

"We're here," said Wilson.

She blinked. The phone was closed and sitting in her lap. She tossed it back to Wilson and got out of the car. She missed Rachel and wondered if it might have been better to go get her, bring her with them. Then it really would be a family affair.

They'd set out immediately after the Friday afternoon staffer. It was barely five o'clock. The sun was still relatively high, and the weather was unseasonably hot and humid, as if it were August, not June. She shrugged out of her cardigan. Wilson hadn't even brought his coat. They were both sweating by the time they paced each other across the street and up the short flight of stairs.

Wilson had lived here for several months after the divorce. He still had the full set of keys. He unlocked the mailbox and removed a sheaf of mail and ads, which he handed to her so he could open the outer door. There was a trick to it. The lock tended to stick if you didn't push the key in all the way. Or turn it with enough force. Or something. Cuddy didn't have copies of House's keys, but she'd seen him do it a couple of times.

Now she was watching Wilson. "What did you tell Foreman?"

Earlier that week, Wilson and Foreman had held a long closed-door session. She assumed they were arranging House's work life, but this was the first time she felt up to asking Wilson about it.

Wilson jiggled the key in the lock. The rest of the set chimed. "I told Foreman—" He gritted his teeth in frustration. Tried to pull the key out and couldn't do that, either. "—that House had a psychotic episode and got committed. I don't know what he told the team."

Cuddy started and almost dropped the mail.

"What?" said Wilson, glancing up at her. "He'd find out anyway."

"That was protected information," she said coolly. "You had no right." _How humiliated he'll be_, she thought. Sure, he acted like he didn't care, but the trust of his team was so valuable to him.

"Hmm?" Wilson was back to wrestling with the latch. "Oh. Foreman didn't believe me. Actually, the top theories are: House quit for a job in New York, you fired him and he moved to Acapulco, I killed him, _you_ killed him, we both did, and—" He struck the door sharply with the heel of his hand. "Death by auto-erotic asphyxiation. Ah-ha."

The _ah-ha_ was because the door had finally sprung open.

He smiled briefly. "Rehab doesn't even make the top ten." He held the door open for her, bowing theatrically as she passed.


	4. Once they were through

Once they were through the outer door, getting into the place was easy enough; House had left it unlocked. Wilson pushed the inner door open, thinking, _Well, there's a metaphor. _But what it meant, if anything, he really couldn't say.

Cuddy drifted past him and Wilson followed, locking up behind them.

The apartment was dim and smelled a little musty. The bathroom light was on, and so was a single light in the kitchen, and it was clear that whoever House paid to do the cleaning these days had come and gone. The place could have been a model home, with Wilson and Cuddy playing the parts of potential buyers.

Wilson had noticed that quality about House's condo before, and worried about it sometimes. It was obvious to everyone that the man who lived here led a vibrant and solitary intellectual life. But House's home had a place-for-everything orderliness that made Wilson wonder where his friend actually _lived_. His life is spiraling out of control; he's having a psychotic episode; you could _still_ do surgery in this place. What was that?

The way Cuddy was probing the neat stack of medical journals on the coffee table, she might have been wondering the same thing.

Wilson crossed into the kitchen, took a butter knife out of the drawer, and used it to slice open House's mail. He had no scruples about House's privacy, his secrets; one of the lessons Danny had taught the Wilson family was that privacy was an enemy. Time like this, you were obligated to throw open the curtains and let in the light. Not to mention the simple and practical concern that somebody had to pay the bills.

Of course, in House's case throwing open the curtains illuminated very little:

Junk, junk, _It's time to see your dentist!_ (junk), a statement from TIAA-CREF (_how depressing_, Wilson thought, comparing it to his own), _Sports Illustrated _(keep), the usual stack "requesting a moment of your time" or "inviting your participation." Wilson set these aside, intending to answer them all.

He heard a sharp, clear tone from the living room. He paused, cocked his head. After a moment he dropped the butter knife back in its drawer and leaned out of the kitchen doorway. Cuddy was standing at the piano. She looked intensely preoccupied. Grinding away on whatever inner dilemma troubled her so much since—and here he also avoided saying it—since _last week_.

Wilson said, "What are you doing?"

"Hm?" She shook herself, tucked an imaginary piece of hair behind her ear. "Uh. Nothing."

"You could put together some of his books," Wilson suggested. "Probably don't have Steinberg's _Pathology_ at the Mayfield library."

She sort of chuckled; there were a _lot_ of things House liked to read that they probably didn't have at the Mayfield library. She blinked a few times, focusing. "Yeah. All right."

Wilson ducked back into the kitchen, chewing his lip.

_Clean out fridge; run white vinegar through the Mr. Coffee_. He told himself to do these things, and then did them, automatically, as if he were in his own home. It was better not to think about the implications, the concept of things shutting down, running out, being cleaned up and put away. Nineeen years ago he'd put Danny's things away—and wasn't that an ordeal; when Danny crashed, he _crashed_; Wilson still woke up in the middle of the night remembering the smell—and they were still put away. All of his brother's worldly possessions contained in one-half of a storage unit near the university.

Nineeen years. A lifetime.

But House was not Danny. House _functioned_. Okay, not perfectly, not all the time, but evidence of House's potential for stability was everywhere. Danny would never get a gilded invitation from the AMA or anyone else; House got four of those a week. So there had never been a time, even now, that Wilson could draw realistic parallels between his troubled friend and his troubled baby brother. Okay, there was something to be said about Wilson having a little thing for nutcases, but there was no _other_ realistic parallel.

Easier to make connections between himself at his worst time and Cuddy now. She'd been avoiding him, but he kept an eye on her. Her work wasn't really suffering, but she was. Wilson recognized the signs. That sense of being in limbo, of being unable to move on because nothing had ended, but equally unable to stop and wait for someone. A decade of therapy, thousands of dollars, this was the insight Wilson got out of it all: It doesn't stay May forever. You have to live.

He realized he had made coffee, not cleaned the pot. So much for putting things on autopilot. So much for not thinking about it. He shook his head. But there was no reason to waste a good brew. He made two mugs, adding cream, sugar, and—after checking the clock—a polite slug of whisky to each.

He took the mail and the two mugs into the living room.

When he got there, he froze. Then he processed the situation and kept going.

Cuddy had started to do what Wilson had suggested. She had selected a few of the more worn-looking books from the shelf and stacked them on the floor. But at some point she had gotten her hands on some dark markers, and this had given her an idea. She'd pulled up the blinds on the window.

On one half of the glass Cuddy had written:

INSOMNIA

HALLUCINATIONS

DELUSIONS

AGITATION

PAIN

On the other half:

GUILT

GRIEF

FRUSTR—

Halfway through _frustration_, she sensed him in the room, and pivoted. She plucked a mug from his hands with relief and took a gulp. Her eyes were as bright as Wilson had seen them since she'd brought House to Wilson's office, six days ago. She was keyed up, exhilarated. It was exactly the way _House _got, when he was hot on an idea.

"Huh," Wilson muttered, studying the window. He kept a substantially similar list on a scrap of paper in his wallet. Similar, but not the same. He set the bundle of mail aside, perched on the arm of the couch and crossed his legs. "Who are we diagnosing now?" He sipped thoughtfully, savoring the alcoholic taste. "Him or you?"


	5. It must be one of House's

It must be one of House's indulgences, this coffee. It had a dark and complicated taste that immediately put Cuddy in mind of Honduras, Columbia, a warm, humid place. She was surprised but not disappointed that Wilson had made an Irish breakfast out of it. She caught Wilson's eye, and he lifted his brows and shrugged, so she took another taste. She felt drunk before she lowered the mug. The alcohol stung her lips, and she wiped them with a knuckle.

"Don't do that," she said. The whisky was strong; she had to clear her throat.

"What?" said Wilson, peering at her over the rim of his mug. "What am I doing?"

"You shouldn't joke about it."

Scoring moral points off Wilson. This really was one of those days.

"No, no." It was more of a look than a word; he smiled apologetically, shook his head.

She had the marker in one hand and was twisting it around, unsure of how or where to continue.

Wilson's attention shifted. "You know that's permanent marker."

She glanced at the window in horror, then looked down at the marker. A green Vis-à-vis, chisel tip. "It's wet erase," she said. Then she glared, suddenly angry. Wilson was _messing_ with her.

This wasn't how this conversation was supposed to go. Not _this_ conversation. Not with _Wilson_. He was House's ally, House's analyst, House's martyr. How could he be so passive? In the eight years of their acquaintance, Wilson had occasionally surprised her, but on matters concerning Greg House he was eminently reliable.

_Except…?_ She wondered what Wilson's motivations were for pushing House into her orbit these last few months, and was briefly tempted to write _isolation_ on the window.

"You know, I really don't understand," she flared. "We should have done this earlier. We should have done it when it happened." Unable to stay still, she paced, marking her point in the air with the pen. "If it were either one of us, this is _exactly_ what he would be—"

"Not exactly." He spoke softly, and there was no ripple in his expression or demeanor, but his voice stopped her. He sipped his drink and let the silence float up from the floorboards. Trying to throttle the tension--or gun it; Cuddy wasn't sure. Wilson set the mug aside and sat up a little straighter on the arm of the couch. He nodded at the window. "House," he said, "would never consider 'guilt' as a cause or a symptom."

The anger had faded, quick as an ember, but Cuddy was buoyed by the drink and the conversation. In fact, she felt clearer than she had in hours, possibly days. "But it _is_," she insisted. "It's one or the other. Maybe both."

"No doubt," he said. "But—"

She stomped a foot. "But _what_? Why shouldn't we talk about it? Maybe if we had talked about it sooner, he wouldn't be where he is."

Wilson's voice and mannerisms were miles off from House's, and he made little effort to match his friend, but he still managed to invoke the diagnostician with his next line. "Is there a pill for guilt? An experimental treatment? Surgery? Can you test for guilt? Can you measure it? No?" He scowled, an expression common enough for House when he was deliberating a problem, but very rare for Wilson in _any_ situation. "So forget it. Give me something I can _use_."

Having completed his performance, Wilson blinked—or cringed.

Cuddy had started to say something sharp about how House was measuring guilt right now, but this small crack in Wilson's facade confused her. Wilson did not come easily to the empirical approach. Yet he recalled his friend's philosophy easily and spoke it fluently. Conjuring House, in House's apartment, seemed to bite Wilson in a way that the raw facts of the situation did not. But his anxious expression was gone in a moment.

So quickly that Cuddy wondered if she had seen anything.

"You don't really believe that," she said. It wasn't a question.

He sighed. "No, I—" He lifted a hand, pushing the debate back for a moment. "Look. Can you come over here and sit down? I mean, this…" He gestured, encompassing their relative positions, the window, Cuddy poised to write down another guess or conjecture. "It's a little…"

It was, a little. They adjourned to the couch, facing a TV that was off, the low table, the stack of medical journals foreign and domestic. They sat close; if it had been House, it might have been an intimate moment. Now, thanks to the late hour, the dim light, their recent conversation, it put Cuddy in mind of a huddle between two secret agents, collating the latest dispatches from the battlefield.

Wilson looked at her for a minute, sizing her up for the third time in as many hours. He steepled his fingers. "What do you know," he said, "about the _content_ of House's delusions?"


	6. Silence

Silence.

A kind of silence that Wilson had not often experienced, though it always had a lasting impact. It was not an absence of sound, but a sensory assault: while he waited, he noticed the rich, dark aroma of the coffee, Cuddy's cherry perfume, the click-hum of the refrigerator revving up. The early night pressing against the window was not merely dark, but _blue_, Cuddy's etched anxieties still barely legible. Colors became richer, lines more sharply defined, as if the external world was asserting itself before it was transformed.

_Transformed._ That was the right word. Because things were about to change. Wilson had brought something to life by speaking of it, the way you reified a dream—or a nightmare—by sharing it with someone. Yes, this thing exists. Yes, we both know. And even alluding to these truths means we have to do something.

_You_ have to do something, Cuddy. Because right now I'm doing the only thing I can do.

Cuddy relieved the tension, as she often did, with movement. She nudged him away with a knee and twisted until she was sitting lengthwise on the couch. She tucked her knees up to her chest and rested her chin there, peering at him. It was a comfortable, lithe, almost adolescent pose. And—what was that look? Perhaps because there was no House to analyze, he'd spent some time deciphering Cuddy's expressions. The whole week, really, he'd been reading anxiety, numbness, exhaustion. And those things were still there. But now her jaw was set, her eyes clear. She wasn't flinching. She was resolved. Maybe even relieved. Wilson looked away; he had to gut-check against one of those little embers of appreciation she sometimes lit in him.

If she saw him conceal the smile, she gave no sign.

"I know…" She shook her head. Another approach. "He didn't _tell_ me…" She bit her lip and swallowed fiercely. But this wasn't the struggle and prevarication that he'd seen in his office earlier that day. She was clear about what she felt. Like him, she was now reaching for the right words. "That afternoon." Her eyes narrowed. Her hands clenched into fists, and she blinked as if they'd surprised her. "I've never been that angry at him. At anyone. You know. He's not like other people. I mean—he says things, he does things, it's not because he's a bad person. He just doesn't understand how it can… that kind of thing doesn't hurt _him_, so it must not hurt. That's what he thinks, right?"

Wilson was silent.

Fortunately, she needed no encouragement. "But that day. It wasn't a joke. It wasn't because he was detoxing or in pain. It wasn't because he _didn't care_. And—" And this seemed to her to be the worst betrayal, a wound that would leave a scar. "It wasn't _private_. He humiliated me. He terrorized me. He—" Her voice faltered again, and this time she didn't fight it. She lifted a hand and pressed her fingertips against the corners of her eyes.

A black slick of guilt flooded Wilson's chest; working off a misunderstanding of current events, Wilson had advised his friend to jolt Cuddy out of what they saw as self-imposed isolation. He saw no benefit in admitting this to her, but he shared Cuddy's embarrassment, her anger. Except there was no one to take it out on but himself.

"I was so angry. But he wouldn't let me walk away. He followed me. You know how he is." She smiled at the thought, her face still damp with tears. "He wanted to talk." She took a deep, shaky breath. "I think… I think I got it before he did. Just before." She held her index finger and thumb an inch apart; she and House had been neck-and-neck on the realization—and acceptance—that he was delusional. "Scared the hell out of me. And his _face_…" Cuddy looked past Wilson, and he knew that she was back there. With House. Then, with a sigh, she seemed to settle back into herself, her trembling only obvious when it stopped. She fixed Wilson with a sharp stare. "I know it was about me." As if daring him to deny it. "I know what I need to know."

_Do you_? Wilson wondered.

As if continuing with her story, Cuddy erupted, "He was seeing a psychiatrist."

Wilson had been slouching in the sofa in his typical listener's pose, but at this he sat straight up, his heart thudding, ears ringing as if she'd hit him.

"He didn't tell you?" She was surprised. She thought—quite wrongly, especially in these later months—that Wilson was the first to learn every bit of news about their friend.

"He didn't tell me _you_ knew."

She nodded. "I, uh, I gave him some names. Last fall. Right after you came back to work."

_When she got approval for the adoption_, Wilson thought, but didn't say.

"And he called one?" Skepticism toned in his voice.

She smiled again, that sad-patient smile. "Not right away."

And Wilson had the pleasure of actually asking a question that he had too much respect to pose to House himself. "So how long has he been…"

"I don't know for sure. More than a month, less than a quarter." She tensed, and her gray eyes gleamed. "Lot of good _that _did. I swear to God, I ever speak to that psychiatrist again…" She could not articulate a sufficient punishment.

He wanted to comfort her, but he wasn't sure how; she was radiating _don't touch me_ like an electric fence. Instead, he reached into his pocket and took out his leather wallet, opened the billfold, fumbled through the cards and receipts until he found what he wanted. He spread it flat on the table and gestured for her come over.

"Know what this is?" he said.


	7. It was

It was an envelope.

Cuddy planted her feet on the floor and leaned forward, palms and lips tingling. She recognized it. Anybody would. It was a standard business-class envelope. Every PPTH manager had boxes of them. Like the ones in the boxes, this one was empty. Unlike the ones in the boxes, the most important piece of information it carried was on the outside. Wilson had been carrying it for a while; the edges were rough and there was a deep crease where it had been pressed into the billfold. If he kept carrying it around like that it was going to fall apart.

Wilson's envelope. But Cuddy knew House's careless scrawl, knew it as well as well as she knew her own:

SLEEP APNEA

INFECTION

TRAUMA

M.S.

SCHIZOPHRENIA

House. She glanced up at the window. The green marks were illegible now, but she read them anyway. Guilt. Frustration. Here it was, then, so clear it that a judge would certainly admit it into evidence: what made House so different from her, what made him so essentially the same. _House would never list "guilt" as a cause or a symptom._ He'd never even consider it.

He was a practical man.

Her stomach twisted. Her face burned. Why had Wilson kept this… this _thing_? The little scrap underlined both House's private struggle for meaning and their friend's most casual work. How many times had he done that in his life? Made a list. Worked through it. Made another. God, it evoked House as if he was _standing_ there.

But not House as Cuddy always thought of him. In twenty years, some things changed, but not everything. And one thing that hadn't changed, maybe _the one thing_, was House's self-assurance. The lazy smirk, the easy demeanor, the look that never changed whether he was looking at you over a chemistry textbook or a medical journal or reading glasses. Assessing, judging, occasionally mocking: _Oh, yeah? Well, fuck you if you can't take a joke. _

It was this confidence, more than anything, that had made him a legend at school, that attracted and repelled women in equal measure, that had carried him through the infarction and Stacy and the pain, that kept him functional on the drugs, that marked him as the strongest person Cuddy had ever met. Strong like good whisky was strong. Like thunderstorms. When Cuddy saw it in his face—which happened every day, his office between ten and twelve, her office between three and five, like that—she thought she was seeing something essential, something that did not age, something she could rely on. She thought _House_, and she saw that look, and felt a little stronger, too.

Not anymore. Physically there was nothing to distinguish this particular note from the dozens of DDX's House had written in his own hand; the script betrayed no unusual stress or confusion. But still.

This was proof of a sickness he was not equipped to diagnose, a mystery that would never be solved through the faithful elimination of _options_. Maybe a mystery that couldn't be solved, that would simply unwind into eternity, defying the logical mind until the logical mind gave up.

She thought of House now and what came to her was not a memory but a feeling, a poisonous fear that clawed in her chest, in the back of her head, behind her eyes. A relentless pressure that made her feel small and weak and alone. A litany she could not silence. How he must have felt. How long he must have felt that way. All that time when she was admiring him for his strength, drawing on it herself. Deep inside, compassion battled revul—she stopped herself. _Never_ that, never. But rejection and rage, certainly. This was not how it was supposed to be. This was not how their lives worked.

No. Just no.

It was like looking at a suicide note.

"Turn it over," Wilson said. His voice was soft. She had forgotten they were here. To be honest, she had forgotten where they were. But his voice didn't startle her. It rose on one of the crests of emotion she felt and landed lightly in her inner world. She wondered, not for the first time, how he did that, what subtle instinct told him when to speak and when to be silent. And why he hadn't become a psychiatrist like every other perceptive martyr in the medical field.

She extended a finger and flipped the envelope.

There was no way to tell whether it had been added before he made the list of causes, or after, whether it had been written in private, in Wilson's company, or in hers (he was always writing something down, she realized). But it was obvious that he'd meant it. He'd gone back to it more than once. Like the ritual of writing it and repeating it would conjure an answer. The word had been traced over with black, red and blue pen, underlined strongly, several times. Any more, and he would have cut the paper.

WHY?

Enough. Her face was wet. Her hands were shaking. "You son of a bitch," she muttered, and the heat in her own voice frightened her.

"Are you talking to me?" said Wilson. His tone was gentle.

She was. He had done it again. He had done it to her because _he_ wasn't here, and she was an acceptable substitute. And he had done it to her because he was an emotional fundamentalist, uncomfortable with anybody who didn't deal with things the way Wilson dealt with them. And because he saw her and he understood. He needed to push her, not only for her sake, and not just to satisfy his compulsions, but because they both had to be prepared. They had to be on the same page. They had to be ready. When House came home.

Yeah, she was talking to Wilson.

And, no, she wasn't.

"You didn't have to bring me here for this."

"You're angry."

"Damn right I am!"

"_Damn _right." Satisfaction in his voice. She looked up. His jaw was set; a gas-flame behind his eyes had been turned on _lo_. Wilson's anger was a rare and dangerous discovery. He caught her staring and dropped it, just dropped it.

Cuddy was still weeping a little. She couldn't stop, but then, she put no effort into it either. She let it come. Wilson's gaze swept the room, pulling hers with it.

The orderliness of it all. The balance.

_When you left a house..._

Then he started to laugh. Staccato chuckles, very unlike the boyish laugh House could sometimes draw out of him. Sharp and out of place in this dim room, between them. But sincere. So sincere that a single giggle floated up her chest and out of her mouth, though she did not understand.

Wilson shook his head, flashed his teeth. His hand cast out and landed on her wrist.

As calculating as he was about offering support, he was absent-minded about taking it. His warm hand clamped onto her like he was taking her pulse. With his other hand, he gripped his temples.

"God help us, Cuddy," he said, still trembling with laughter.

She had never felt less like joking in her life, but couldn't stop herself from smiling. If you could call it a smile. "What?"

"Private rooms. Doctors on-call. Individualized treatment plans. Daily visits with a therapist. Planned activities." He sighed. Smiled at the room. At her. "A real shelter from the world."

Quotes from the Mayfield literature? She took a deep, authoritative breath, but had absolutely nothing to say.

"You ever think…" He shook his head again. Got a hold of himself. "You ever think we didn't check him into a psych ward that day?" He dropped his hand. Cocked his head. Focused on her, brown eyes clear and sincere as they had ever been. "Damned if we didn't check him out."

This time she really laughed. Deeply and ironically. From the heart.

She wiped her face with her free hand.

Wilson felt the movement and glanced down, surprised that he was still gripping her wrist. He let it go, shook out the cramp. The place where he had touched her felt cold.

He rested his fingertips on her shoulder, pushing her gently forward. "Come on," he said. He conjured his keys. "I'll take you home."


End file.
